OF all the modern Slavic states, Czechoslovakia is by far the best situated from an economic point of view and in regard to the genenal state of culture of the majority of its cities.But it is an artificial state.It received its autonomy as a reward for having walked out on the Austrian Empire during the World War, and although it now consists of three parts, Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia, it is hard to say whether it can survive all by itself.

In the first place, the country is land-locked. In the second place, there is very little love lost between the Catholic Czechs and the Protestant Slovaks.The former, as part of the German speaking Austrian Kingdom, had always been in direct contact with the rest of the world.Whereas the latter, badly administered by their Hungarian masters, had never risen very far above the status of mean little peasants.

As for the Moravians, whose country, situated between Bohemia and Slovakia, contains by far the most fertile agricultural part of the entire Czecho-slovakian commonwealth, it is politically quite insignificant, and therefore takes no part in the endless quarrels and feuds which have made the nine million Czechs treat the four million Slovaks in very much the same way as they were treated formerly by the Hungarians, whose respect for the rights of racial minorities is of very recent origin.

Any one who wishes to study racial problems at their very worst is politely referred to central Europe. The situation is really quite hopeless.Czechoslov-akia is not as bad as many other countries.But Czechoslovakia too is composed of three different groups of Slavs who happen to hate each other and the problem is still further complicated by the presence of about three million Germans, the descendants of certain Teutonic immigrants who during the Middle Ages had moved to Bohemia to help in the development of the mineral riches of the Erzgebirge and the Bφhmerwald.

Finally in the year 1526 Bohemia had gone the way of all central European real estate and had been acquired by the house of Habsburg. During the next 388 years Bohemia had then been an Austrian colony.It had not been treated badly.German schools and German universities and German thoroughness of method had made the Czechs almost the only people of purely Slavic origin who had known how to work at a job with some steadiness of purpose.But no subject race has ever liked its masters because they treated them rather kindly and occasionally sent them a present for Christmas.And since revenge seems to be a perfectly natural instinct it need not surprise us that the Czechs, once they had gained their freedom, tried to turn the tables on their former rulers.Czechish was made the official language of the country and German became merely one of the tolerated dialects, like the Hungarian of Slovakia, and the new generation of Czech children was raised on a literary diet of strictly Czech origin.Which was no doubt magnificent from a patriotic point of view.But whereas formerly every Bohemian infant with his knowledge of German had been able to make himself understood to at least a hundred million people, he now finds himself restricted to the few million who speak Czech, and the moment he pokes his head outside of his own country, he is lost, for who is ever going to take the trouble to learn a language which has no commercial value and has no literature?The Czech government, being composed of men high above the average of central European statesmanship, may gradually encourage a return to the old bilingual method.But they will have a hard time defending such a project against the professors of language who hate the idea of a universal tongue as a political demagogue loathes the prospect of a union of all parties.

Bohemia was not only one of the rich agricultural parts of the old Habsburg monarchy but was also a highly industrial province with its iron and coal and its world-renowned ability in the difficult att of glass-making. Furthermore, the industrious Czech peasants have always been very clever at home industries(after twelve hours in the fields they must do something with their spare time)and Bohemian textiles and Bohemian rugs and Bohemian shoes are famous all the world over.But the old territory into which these products could be imported free of duty—one of the few but very concrete advantages of the Habsburg rule—is now divided into half a dozen little principalities, each one of which has surrounded itself with heavily spiked tariff walls in order to ruin the other fellow's business.Whereas formerly a car-load of beer could travel from Pilsen to Fiume without ever being stopped on the way for a customs examination or without paying a cent of duty, it now must change cars at half a dozen frontiers, is obliged to pay duty half a dozen times, and when it arrives after weeks of delay, the beer has long since turned sour!

Self-determination for small nations may be an excellent thing from an idealistic point of view, but it does not seem to work out so well when it comes in conflict with the natural lay of the landscape or the brutal necessities of economic life. But as long as the people of the year 1932 prefer to do their thinking in terms of 1432,I don't suppose that we can do anything about it.

For the benefit of those who intend to travel in Czechoslovakia, I will add that Prague is no longer situated on the Moldau which runs eventually into the Elbe, but that Praha is located on the Vltava;that Pilsen, where you went to drink beer, is now Plzen(where you still go to drink beer);and that those who did not drink but were tempted to overeat, no longer take a cure at Carlsbad but at Karlovy-Vary and that those who preferred Marienbad now patronize Marianske Lazne. But remember that when you take the train from Brunn to Pressburg, you must look for the carriages that go from Brno to Bratislava unless you ask a Hungarian conductor who has survived from the days when Slovakia was ruled by Budapest.He will give you a blank stare until you explain that what you really mean is Pozsony.All things considered, it is perhaps just as well that those Dutch and Swedish and French colonies on our hemisphere did not last longer than they did.